I’ll say it right up front. I’ve never been a huge fan of Microsoft Office. I started using Microsoft Works when I was at school the first time. When I went back to school to finish my degrees I had already spent too much time using Office at various office jobs but still hadn’t discovered Open Office (see my later article here).
Anyway, it’s really popular. Mostly because Outlook is the only mail client capable of connecting to MAPI and thus the only one to get all those integrated Exchange features. Not so true any more, but that’s the historical fact.
Now with that out there, I would like to say that as a person who has used Office since ’97 it seems to me that they work hard to frustrate their user-base with each new iteration.
When they introduced the Ribbon (Office 207) I thought “that’s stupid; it’s just more difficult to find things now” and I felt bad for all those old people who rely on Office for their livelihood. I’m sure those old people are used to the Ribbon by now so it’s probably no big deal.
But now it’s 2013. Those oh-so-clever cats in Redmond (farm country!) have made the fugliest version of Office EVER. Seriously, Office 2013 is a huge aesthetic roll-back. They wiped the lipstick off the pig.
The rounded corners are all square again. Everything is clunky and looks like it too was designed by Fischer-Price. Even the Aero features like the so-called glass theme won’t carry into the various Office applications. (You can read my article discussing the Fischer-Pricing of Windows here.)
In all fairness, you can customize it. You can add a splash of background. This background shows up as a tiny bit of art in the upper-right corner of the window. I have some sea stuff. I feel like a beach.
You can also choose a bit of color for the window framing (especially cool since the aforementioned glass is gone). You can choose from between three colors: white, gray, or a slightly darker gray.
[rolls eyes]
Why so ugly? Did they learn nothing from getting their asses handed to them by Apple and even Google in the devices market? The Slate looks pretty good. Why so ugly?!
There you have it.
(For those who are comfortable with mild change, you can try either OpenOffice or OfficeLibre. Here is an article I wrote about OOo.)
This look is indeed ugly, but it’s nothing new. It follows the same design (or lack of design, with all the minimalism and removal of 3dness and color) that Windows 8 started.
Yeah, Windows 8 is also fugly. No doubt about that. I mean, the
Metro interfaceModern UIwhatever-it’s-called-today is presumably acceptable on a small touch-enabled device, but it is grossly exaggerated in a desktop environment as well as (as you say) flat and dull and essentially lifeless. No one here (where I work) is using Win8 unless it is required for development or testing purposes. We’ll see what Win9 has to offer.I know that Office 2013 ought to be able to employ the Aero features (like glass) because I have seen an Outlook window switch to the glass look while it was temporarily frozen. So this marvelous ugliness is overlaid on Aero. Go figure.
Just started a trial of Office 2013 last night. Immediately I was in state of shock. It looks so bland and ugly and so uncomfortable for your eyes. Something terribly odd has indeed happened to Microsoft’s aesthetic sense. The functionality of new Office is great, but the design is just intolerable. When I woke up this morning, I hoped I had had a nightmare, but was in tears when started my PC and realised it was a reality. Microsoft Office is dead – as far as the aesthetics are concerned.
I find myself struggling to find the minimize and maximize buttons in the upper-right (even if to avoid clicking them). You can always test using OpenOffice or Office Libre. I added a link above to a brief article I wrote on OOo.
“They wiped the lipstick off the pig”…classic! I’m not a Microsoft hater but am bitterly disappointed with this product and the shift towards low-resource computing. Uninstalled.
Thanks. I try to keep it lively.
I think this all ties in with Micro$oft$ new Fugly Strategy ™ Seriously, the marketing guru’s all smoked em peace em pipe and must have thought, what’s the best way we can shake up the foundation of our existing customer base and shift the focus away from Apple? Fugliness++ ad nauseum. Without doubt it amazes me how they can keep repackaging the same core office system in a new wrapper and get away with it. The Fugliness++ ™ strategy has done a good job of subverting this fact, the ribbon remember?. What was once: Open word, File–>Open–>Explorer GUI, is now: Open word, Open other documents–>Computer–>Browse–>Explorer GUI
They did this with the system tray clock in the way back machine if yawl remember.
The core components are one and the same, they have fkuced with the interface and said ‘Office XXXX’. What special new features have they added that could simply not have been add-ins? Sky Drive? surely that can be an add-in? Nah nothing really, WYSIWYG.
I laugh stupidly haha
Too true, YeahYeah.
This might have been appropriate in Windows 2 (no zeros after that!). It looks like it would run fine on a VGA monitor, maybe even on a CGA monitor. Straight out of the 80s.
Too true, mcswell.
It’s unbearable and in many ways going back in time. They slaughtered Lync. You can’t even see the expressions on the dull emoticons. Not a big deal but shouldn’t the graphics improve vs sliding backwards? Dull horribly plain colors on everything, I had to hack a DLL file just to dim down the white everything theme; the grey, light grey, lighter grey is an absolute joke. Lumping all the lync conversations into one tab was a huge mistake.
In the words of the great Oprah “you go, girl”. Yeah, shit’s ugly. Thanks, Kevin.